“I no like trouble”, isn’t something you’d expect to hear from an area boy, but when you losetwo friends from a fight over an ignorable issue like taking cabbage from a small pack of suya, your view of life changes entirely. This is the story of ‘Agamma’, one of the area boys whose story Tolu Itegboje told in his new documentary. Beyond this story of loss, is also a tale of his meeting with Afrobeat legend Fela, a mentorship stint and a music career which hasn’t blown to the extent it should have, seeing that he grew up on Fela’s music.Agamma’s story is one out of many intriguing stories captured in this new documentary, AwonBoyz, which provides a never seen before view of what it is like to live on the streets of Lagos- how people find themselves there, what they have to do to survive, and what the futureholds for lives such as theirs.There are certain expectations from people living on the streets. There is a reason they arecalled area boys; but the thing is, many of them don’t actually sleep on the streets like mostpeople are led to believe. They often have homes, no matter how small they might be, withfamilies of their own, and while they may share quite a number of similarities, their stories also carry some uniqueness that reflects what each person’s journey has been.For one of the area boys, the documentary was an opportunity to reminisce about leaving home anddeciding to fend for himself on the free streets of Lagos. It was also a chance to remember his first street fight and think for a split second if he could have avoided it and ensured the scar it brought with it was never earned.Not many Nigerian businesses can boast of a certain creditworthiness or a willing customerbase ready to pre-order their goods; but area boys can. They are sweet talkers who havemastered the act of sales and negotiation like their lives depend on it, because they do.Nigeria has a growing number of entrepreneurial ventures, with Lagos boasting the largestnumber of them, and the most successful of them; and one wouldn’t be wrong if they said thatthe wisdom of the streets has contributed in some way to that success.Awon Boyz is more than just a documentary about area boys, and anyone who looks closelywill find that the stories told in the film could as well be that of any Nigerian seeking a betterlife. In the form which they are told, each person draws the viewer into his own world and giftsthem the power to imagine what they would have done if they well dealt same situations thatthey had. On the outside, it is easy to think that everyone on the street came for the freedomit affords, running from homes where they could have been more protected and betternurtured, but like one of them says - life is a fight, and sometimes even when you run from the fight, e go still come meet you.In the months and years to come, area boys won’t be the only ones grateful that they got theopportunity to speak their truth; all of us will. What Tolu Itegboje and his crew at Zero Degreeshave done with this documentary is to tell a more complete story about a topic that has forlong existed in a singular form; and to tell it in a way that makes for deep introspection andquestions what we know about hustle and the Naija spirit. The post More Than Meets The Eye; Nigerian Director and Producer, Tolu Itegboje, Sheds Light on The Life of Area Boys in Nigeria appeared first on Linda Ikeji Blog.
More Than Meets The Eye; Nigerian Director and Producer, Tolu Itegboje, Sheds Light on The Life of Area Boys in Nigeria
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